Summer Heat

Summer is a great time for vacations, backyard barbecues, and road races. To be sure, the weather might be a bit cooler and more conducive to fast times in the spring and fall, which is why most marathons are situated in those two seasons, but the long, lazy days of summer seem to be made for hanging out after a race and trading running war stories with friends, either those you’ve known forever or have just met over the course of several miles of hot asphalt.

Using the conventional, if not official, Memorial Day to Labor Day definition of summer, we’ll take an imaginary racing tour of the country, like those pilgrimages to ballparks sometimes undertaken by hard-core baseball fans. For the most part, it’s a similar circuit to that followed by the professional racers, but ours will include a few races that are still purely amateur. By no means an all-inclusive list, it is rather a survey of the varied offerings that make racing as much a part of summer as cookouts, swimming, and baseball games.

MAY

Our summer racing hegira begins on Memorial Day in the foothills of the Rockies with the Bolder Boulder 10K. In a quarter of a century, Bolder Boulder has grown to be one of the biggest races in the country, and utilizes some two dozen waves to start the open runners on a winding course through bucolic residential neighborhoods. The finish is among the most spectacular in the sport: after a short, steep hill, runners circle the track around the football field of the University of Colorado’s Folsom Stadium. Most of the 48,000 open runners then stay and fill the stands to watch the elite criterium-style race, which is televised on the stadium’s big screens.

JUNE

In June female runners can partake of the Empire State women’s running double-feature, the Freihofer’s 5K in Albany followed a week later by the New York Mini Marathon 10K. Both were pioneers in the all-women’s race field and have consistently attracted world-class performers through the years. Freihofer’s features an up-loop-down course that produces screaming and thrilling finishes and rewards entrants with boxes of chocolate chip cookies, while the Mini follows an undulating loop of Central Park and uses the same finish as the New York City Marathon, next to the tony Tavern on the Green.

The same day as Freihofer’s, a coed field, led by world class runners, will be racing along the Illinois River in Peoria, IL, at the Steamboat Classic 4M. When this race started 30 years ago, the four-mile event was a smaller adjunct to a 15K, but the infusion of prize money into the shorter race, plus the avoidance of the hills on the 15K route, has shifted the emphasis and attendance to the four miler.

The day after the Mini everyone is back in action in nearby Connecticut at the Litchfield Hills Road Race. The name alone should be a tipoff to the terrain. The infamous last mile up Gallows Hill to the finish by a picture-book New England town green, plus the high temperatures often encountered due to the 1 p.m. start (necessitated, it is rumored, by the partying that goes on the night before) have slowed many a runner, including the likes of Bill Rodgers and Joan Samuelson. Still, the quaint village is such an attraction the seven-mile race reaches its 1,000-runner limit well ahead of time.

JULY

Independence Day may be the second most popular race date in America after Thanksgiving. One of the country’s biggest, the Peachtree 10K, is the flagship event of the Fourth of July. For 34 years, runners have braved the heat and humidity of mid-summer Georgia to follow a rolling course along Peachtree Road from the Buckhead section of Atlanta to the finish in Piedmont Park. Chip timing and wave starts have allowed some 55,000 to earn a finisher’s shirt, making it the largest 10K race in the world. The photograph of dozens of exhausted runners soaking under the spray of a fire hose that Nike used in its "Battle of Atlanta" ad back in the ’80s may be one of the most lasting images in road racing.

At the other side of the country, a similarly storied 10K is held in Eugene, OR, a city many consider the running capital of America. Butte to Butte features a punishing climb and descent in the first two miles, but is still more humane than its predecessor, a run to the top of 900-foot-high Spencer Butte and back. Several participants in the inaugural run, including Olympian Kenny Moore, were sidelined for weeks from the pounding. The current course is more survivable and draws a field of more than 3,000.

Peachtree is the opening leg of a trifecta of major summer races. A week later, the action shifts to upstate New York for the Utica Boilermaker 15K. Although the course is hilly and the weather often hot, the finish inside the grounds of the F.X. Matt’s Brewery, with free beer for all finishers, makes the effort more bearable. The Boilermaker is truly a community event, as the entire population of the area is seemingly either running in or volunteering at the race. Indeed, that was the goal of organizers when the first Boilermaker was run in 1976, and that small-town feeling remains even as the race has grown to become the biggest 15K in the country.

A similar community feel permeates the Bix 7 in Davenport, IA, a few weeks later. The local newspaper, the Quad-City Times, is the major sponsor, and a publicity blitz leading up to the race makes it the major topic of conversation among the residents. You might think a race that starts along the Mississippi River would be flat, and you’d be dead wrong. The opening mile up Brady Street may be one of the toughest climbs in a major road race, and there are several other tough ascents on the course. The out-and-back layout is a key feature of the course, allowing average runners to see the elites during the middle of the race. Bix may be the largest event that has not gone to Chip timing, instead relying on an army of volunteers whose precision in keeping two dozen finish chutes running smoothly is legendary.

Tucked in between Boilermaker and Bix is the Crazy 8s in Kingsport, TN. There are gimmicks aplenty at this race—a figure-eight course run on candlelit roads after dark being the most notable. The results speak for themselves, though: The race is the site of both the current men’s and women’s world records for 8K.

AUGUST

August brings the dog days of summer and the time for many people to go on vacation. In New England, Maine and Cape Cod are the two prime destinations and perhaps not coincidentally, sites of among the newest and oldest summer races, Beach to Beacon and the Falmouth Road Race.

Getting a vacation property in either locale requires making reservations well in advance, and so does gaining entry into both events, whose fields are filled months before race day. The elite participants in the races needn’t worry about such matters, though—both events are famous for housing their invited runners with local host families.

Beach to Beacon is the new kid on the block, but when the race organizer is the winner of the first women’s Olympic marathon, it was pretty much assured instant classic status. Joan Benoit Samuelson does more than lend her name to the race—she has been involved in its planning and execution from the get-go. She’s used her experience to design what approaches an ideal summer race. The point-to-point course showcases scenic coastal Maine, capped by a finish at Portland Head lighthouse.

Many of the elites spend a few days afterward relaxing and shopping at L.L. Bean, then head south to the Cape for perhaps the quintessential summer race in Falmouth.

Conceived 32 years ago as a run between two bars, Falmouth follows a seaside course from Woods Hole to Falmouth Heights that is lined for almost its entire seven-mile length with fans as loud and boisterous as any big-city marathon. The Atlantic breezes only partially mitigate the August sun that usually bakes this event, but the Falmouth mystique keeps filling the field year after year.

Mid-August might not seem like an ideal month for a half marathon, unless it’s in San Diego, where the easiest job in town is being the weatherman. The climate makes running 13.1 miles possible year-round, so those gearing up for a fall marathon could do worse than use America’s Finest City Half Marathon as a jumping off point in their training. Temperatures in the 70s and a fast course within Balboa Park make the AFC Half’s 5,000-runner field fill quickly.

By late August the end of summer is coming into sight, but the racing continues. The last weekend of the month features two 10-mile races, the Crim Festival of Races in Flint, MI, and the Annapolis 10 in Maryland.

Crim is truly deserving of the "festival" sobriquet; besides the featured 10 miler, which covers a challenging course whose final mile runs down a brick-paved street, there are more than half a dozen ancillary events that take the entire morning to run.

The Annapolis 10 Miler is known for the 3 H’s—heat, humidity and hills. The thick air of the Tidewater summer makes the going tough, but the course, through the town of Annapolis, past the U.S. Naval Academy and across the bridge (twice) over the Severn River is some recompense. So are the finisher’s prizes, which have ranged from vests to tech shirts to running watches.

SEPTEMBER

The long Labor Day weekend signals the the end of summer, and it’s punctuated by holiday races around the country. In a nod to the approaching autumn marathon season, many of them are longer distances.

The Rock ’n’ Roll Half Marathon in Virginia Beach, VA, has taken the musical formula that has made its longer big brothers successful and established itself as a Labor Day weekend fixture in just three years. Rock ’n’ Roll draws 15,000 runners, including many world-class athletes, for a final fling of summer at this seaside resort town.

Up the coast in Connecticut returning Yale students and thousands of runners descend upon New Haven. The 20K road race has witnessed several world bests and last year produced the men’s and women’s American records for the distance.

Outside of Chicago, the Park Forest Scenic 10 Miler has been a similar factory for age-group marks. What other event can boast a midrace stretch through a forest preserve with a string quartet playing along the course?

Although the calendar says summer still has a few weeks to go, practically speaking September means autumn, cross country, and marathons. To be sure, the road race season doesn’t stop (it never does) or even slow down much. But with other parts of the running spectrum occupying the efforts of many, it’s not the singular focus it is between Memorial and Labor Day.

If you’re near any of our featured events this summer, test yourself against their terrain and history. And if not, don’t fret, there are doubtless plenty of other events closer to home. After all, like a backyard garden, the crop of summer road races is a plentiful one indeed.